Search

Firms are often confronted with the need of changing their organizational routines. This might follow or trigger a change in their organizational identity. The aim of this paper is twofold: show why understanding the co-evolution of organizational routines and identity is important for addressing organizational change more broadly and provide propositions on how the courses of action of organizational identity and organizational routines cross and influence such change.

This study explores the evolution of the knowledge base of the dominant Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the global automotive industry. Using data on patent families, we reconstruct and analyze their innovative portfolio in the period 1990-2014. The analysis documents experimentation in new technical fields as well as stability in industry-specific technical areas, allowing to draw implications on the underlying industry dynamics. Specifically, our results show that despite the emergence of technological opportunities in new and once-unrelated technical domains, the importance of core automotive technologies has increased over the period of analysis. At the same time, the relative position of carmakers along different performance dimensions has remained quite stable, suggesting that the technological capabilities that have traditionally driven success in this industry continue to play a key role in explaining firms’ competitive strength.

This paper, building on R&D integration and improvisation literature, explores how firms organize to jointly develop common product platforms if their integration process is still in progress. In order to address our exploratory research question, we draw on a unique set of empirical data gathered during the Fiat-Chrysler R&D integration process and during the development of their first shared product platform. We show that, how due to fierce competition on time in the industry, the two companies did not have time to complete the planned R&D integration. As a consequence, the first shared platform development project represented the real locus of technological, knowledge, and organizational integration between the two firms. In line with the R&D integration literature, this paper identifies a set of planned integration mechanisms: a centralized R&D area, two teams that mirror each other, integrator roles and shared technical norms. This organization was designed to help Fiat and Chrysler exploiting their complementarities. Furthermore, building on the improvisational literature, we show that the planned organization did not suffice: interstices between the two firms exist and planning and improvisation are complementary. Improvisation should be built upon a minimum structure and firms willing to accelerate their integration process can rely upon NPD activities.

Organizational and sociological research dealing with network governance has mainly focused on network advantages rather than on their problems or dysfunctionalities. This left partially unexplored the field of network failure. Even if some early attempts at explicitly theorizing network failures have been made, we argue that explanations based mainly on social conditions (ignorance and opportunism) offered by this emerging theory (e.g. Schrank and Whitford, 2011), are not exhaustive. In this article we report the results of our empirical investigation on the underperforming network between the worldwide famous Venice Film Festival and its local hospitality system (in Venice, Italy). In the case study we are presenting, we will show how institutions have not been able to inhibit opportunism and sustain trust among network members because of mobilizing practices developed across formal lines of communication. With this work we propose a dynamic theory of network failure, answering to the more general call for network theories to focus the attention on agency and micro-processes.

This paper considers the trade-off between leveraging external sources of innovation by outsourcing design and engineering activities and the ability to develop internal product development competences. The trade-off arises because the division of labor within and across firms' boundaries has a crucial role in shaping competence development processes, especially because the division of labor also influences opportunities for learning by doing. In new product development projects, learning by doing appears to be both a key determinant of competence development and a difficult-to-substitute form of learning. While the division of development tasks is often considered as guided by product architecture, we show that by decoupling the decisions concerning the product architecture and the allocation of development tasks, firms can realize the benefits of outsourcing such tasks while developing new internal competences. Drawing on a longitudinal case study in the automotive industry, we also identify a new organizational lever for shaping competence development paths and for designing firm boundaries. This lever consists in alternating different task allocation schemes over time for different types of development projects. We show why this is a novel solution, what its underlying logic is, and how it enables alleviating the trade-off between the benefits of leveraging external sources of innovation and the opportunities for competence development provided by in-house design and engineering. We discuss implications for theories of organizational boundary design and innovation management.

The article argues that organizational sociology would do well to revisit James March’s famed imagery of the business firm as a political coalition in light of today’s decentralized production regimes. Specifically, we show that the increased tendency of firms to coordinate the design and making of highly complex products across organizational boundaries has fundamentally altered and been altered by the politics of coalition building. This is demonstrated using a 15 year longitudinal qualitative case study of the vertical production network that revolves about Fiat Auto. In those years, Fiat went from one of the most vertically integrated automakers in Europe, to one of the least vertically integrated, and has in the wake of a severe crisis now swung back the other way. We argue that this evolution cannot adequately be understood without reference to an interplay of inter- and intra-firm relations, including especially to the spilling of intra-organizational rivalries across firm boundaries, and to the effects of cross-firm coalitions on intra-organizational fights. Analyzing this evolution and these relations from a 'political' perspective allows us to better understand the behavior not merely of particular firms, but also of interacting networks of firms in a world of blurred – but existent – organizational boundaries.

Several streams of recent literature emphasize the advantages of involving external sources of innovation in the process of developing complex products (Powell et al., 1996; Helper et al., 2000; Sturgeon, 2002; Chesbrough, 2003). The question we tackle in the present article is 'What are the key micro organizational decisions for seizing the benefits of a networked innovation strategy?' Building on empirical evidence gathered over a ten-year period at a major European automotive manufacturer, the article presents empirical insights on the organizational challenges that firms face when they decide to rely on external sources of innovation in developing complex products. The empirical evidence highlights two aspects that are important: The role of component specific knowledge in addressing the integration of overall product performance, and the role of learning by doing opportunities in accumulating component specific knowledge. The article shows how managers can greatly benefit from focusing their attention on the organizational aspects of leveraging external sources of innovation and adjusting their innovation strategy, including 'make or buy' choices, accordingly. Strategic and micro organizational decisions, hence, should be considered as tightly coupled and mutually influencing in the context of complex product development. This quite intuitive outcome has been partially neglected in current innovation literature and management practice due to an overemphasis given to product architecture and the possibilities in terms of organization that it enables.